


Cause All You See is Where Else You Could Be

by cashewdani



Category: How I Met Your Mother, The Office (US)
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-06
Updated: 2008-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She tries to convince herself she never wanted to live in New York with Jim, and that he’s just a glorified man-child.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cause All You See is Where Else You Could Be

Jim’s saying something about a yogurt lid and won’t look her in the eye and Karen can only think about how just last night he’d reached out to her in bed, pulling her more closely against him. 

She’s crying, and he keeps saying Pam’s name instead of hers and she knew this was coming and still doesn’t get it at all.

Jim leaves her sobbing miles away from home and she has no idea how someone so supposedly sensitive ended up being such a dick.

\---

“Carrie and Aiden broke up in front of a fountain,” Emily remarks while sucking on the olive from her martini. She happens to be more a friend of Sarah’s than a friend of Karen’s, but really, Sarah is Karen’s only female friend. She can kind of understand reinforcements being necessary. But, this? Is ridiculous.

“Could you not, Em? Seriously.” Karen has already gone from Jack and Coke, to Jack on the rocks, to straight up Jack. She is still not drunk enough for her life to be compared to _Sex and the City_.

Sarah says, “You’re not Carrie.”

“I know I’m not Carrie. I’m not Carrie, and I’m not Pam and I’m going to die alone because I’m Karen Filipelli and Jim Halpert completely fucking sucks.” She hiccups and wipes at her eyes.

“You’re not going to die alone, either.” Sarah pets her hair just like all those nights in their dorm bathroom when Karen was brokenhearted over her high school boyfriend, Ted. 

She still feels disgustingly 18, even after all these years.

Emily reaches out as well, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “And, you can totally get this job and get the hell out of Scranton.”

“That would be nice.” Karen thinks about not having to see Jim or Pam or Michael and all the other people that she only has to see now because she moved there like Jim was Ben Covington and Scranton was her University of New York.

Karen moans, “I’m like Felicity,” and hates that she sometimes chose to eat lunch with Kelly Kapoor.

Sarah tells her, “We won’t let you cut your hair” and for some reason this is insanely comforting. They get another round, and Karen is just waiting, waiting to be blissfully numb to all of this.

She tries to convince herself she never wanted to live in New York with Jim, and that he’s just a glorified man-child. She doesn’t need Jim Halpert and his stupid messenger bag and cloud of apathy. She has a five-year plan, and she’s smart and motivated and going to go places even further than she can dream.

\---

Karen ends the night with Sarah holding her hair back as she throws up in front of a _Kennedy Fried Chicken_ , somewhere on the island of Manhattan.

\---

She’s possibly still drunk when David Wallace calls her the next morning. Drunk or not, she understands him telling her that she was an excellent candidate, but, they decided to go in another direction.

He offers her the position of regional manager in Utica instead, and all Karen can think is Utica and Scranton are different places. At least there’s that, and she didn’t even have to cry on the phone with the CEO of her company.

She accepts and falls back asleep in what feels like the same moment, nearly upright on Sarah’s sofa.

\---

“Did I hear your cell at like nine?” Sarah asks, looking about a million times better than Karen feels. Not that she thinks that would be hard at a time like this.

Karen tries to figure out what happened in between her tripping over Sarah’s coffee table last night and waking up twenty minutes ago with the worst hangover she’s had since New Year’s Day, 2005. She goes back too far and has to attempt to skip past Jim leaving her at the fountain, and ludicrous amounts of whiskey going down and coming back up. And then, the early morning exchange comes rushing into focus. 

David Wallace and him saying _Corporate thinks you’d be a good fit in another capacity_ and her responding _Regional Manager sounds like an excellent challenge_ and, “Oh my God, I think I took a job in Utica.”

\---

Later, following a confirmation call to Wallace’s secretary, and no voicemails at all from someone she dated for over six months, Sarah makes her Eggo waffles and they watch _The Breakfast Club_ like they used to sophomore year. It’s only when Karen realizes she’s going to have to move to upstate New York that she starts crying again.

She has to take the train home wearing an old pair of Sarah’s sweats with her best suit stuffed into a plastic Duane Reade bag. The swaying of the car makes her want to vomit.

Karen knows she’s going to have to try to sublet her apartment, and face Jim at work. There’s about a million things she wants to say to him, but really, she knows that all she wants to hear is that it was a mistake. And that’s utterly, utterly stupid.

When she gets home, she looks up Utica on Wikipedia and sees it’s “The City that God Forgot”, home to the world’s largest watering can and the birthplace of New York from _Flavor of Love_.

Fucking fantastic.

\---

Karen spends Saturday packing. She’s been in this apartment for only five months and it’s not really sad to leave. It’s just tiring. Like pretty much everything in her life has felt the past few days. She wraps her dishes in newspaper and contemplates why she turned her cable off so far in advance.

She can’t find her Penn State sweatshirt and realizes that it’s probably at Jim’s. Along with half her makeup and the better of her two hair dryers. Karen doesn’t want to call Jim. They haven’t spoken since she yelled at him in the kitchen for nearly fifteen minutes. During which time, he had just shot pleading glances at Pam and the camera guy and could have cared less about her.

So, she calls Mark instead. Mark, who may be the only person she’s going to regret getting left behind in the fallout of _JimandPam_. Karen’s name doesn’t even get to appear in her own fallout; those are the kind of issues she’s been trying to deal with.

But, yeah, she knows she’s going to miss Mark. Which is weird because Mark isn’t that much different than Jim. He likes to fuck around and act like he’s a dumbass teenager and thinks if they get pasta from Alfredo’s instead of a pie it’s the epitome of class. Maybe it’s different because she’s not dating Mark, or because she doesn’t work with Mark, or because Mark hasn’t abandonned her anywhere, but Karen doesn’t honestly care that he can’t seem to get his life any more together than it already is.

He says Jim is out, and doesn’t expand at all when Karen asks, “With Pam?” 

She can see him scratching at the back of his neck and shrugging even through the phone line. “I don’t know. Out.”

Karen’s spent a lot of time at Mark and Jim’s house. Drinking trendy beer and playing Playstation until the wee hours of the morning and then having sweaty, frantic sex with her boyfriend that may have been as much about winning as the video games. 

In the beginning, when maybe this thing with Jim was just a fling, it had been a lot of fun. It had felt like when she had first moved away from home, and had hung out with a group of guys that were just really waiting for their band to blow up. 

But, then Jim wasn’t asking her to come to his parent’s place on Christmas Eve, and got her a pack of conversation hearts for Valentine’s Day and she remembered that she wasn’t 22 anymore and was tired of this bullshit. They weren’t newly legal, or broke, and she wanted to do more than drink on his sofa and rack up power crystals.

Maybe it’s that she spent the week feeling 18 and lost, so 22 with its misplaced air of possibility is alluring. Or, maybe it’s just loneliness. But, when Mark asks if she wants to come over to play _Guitar Hero_ and finish up a case of Yuengling, Karen really honestly does.

When she arrives, he’s wearing his Phillies t-shirt with the hole on the left sleeve, and already has a beer opened and ready to go for her. Flicking _Die Hard_ off on the TV, he asks, “You want to talk about it?”

“What, that your friend is a complete asshole who dumped me out of nowhere and just left me in the middle of New York City?”

“Kar, come on, you know it wasn’t out of nowhere.” And his honesty is stinging, but, still, honesty.

She takes a long drag off the bottle he handed to her and follows with, “Shut up and get ready for me to kick your ass.”

\---

A few hours later, the case is definitely empty, and she keeps getting distracted by the way Mark bites his lower lip while he’s concentrating. Which is leading to her clanking a lot and completely bombing everything but her solos.

“Filipelli, seriously, you’re destroying _Kansas_ for me.”

“I’m drunk!” she says with a smile. One of those big, stupid drunk smiles. She can tell.

“Good thing you’re pretty.” He strums to _Message In a Bottle_ and Karen shakes her head, remembering Kevin’s band and Phyllis’ wedding and knows she’s drunk enough to let herself cry, even in front of Mark.

She takes off the red guitar they had decorated with every sticker that came in the box. “I’m going to take a break. Play me some _Thunderhorse_.”

Mark makes his voice all deep, and metal and tells her, “I’m gonna melt your face off” while she laughs and collapses on the sofa.

Karen watches the indicator circles light up and listens to Mark’s fingers gallop on the multicolored keys and it feels exactly like, and completely different from so many other nights in this living room.

He finishes the song with a 5 star performance and she doesn’t get why guys seem to get selectively better at things while they’re intoxicated. Karen reaches her hand out, snagging his back pocket. “Come sit with me.”

“Is that such a good idea?”

She giggles. She honestly giggles. “What are you talking about?”

With a 30 second excerpt of _Dethklok_ playing on repeat, Mark tells her that the first night he met her, he’d gone to bed jerking off to the image of her mouth.

Karen remembers that night, Jim’s welcome back to Scranton party. The party that he asked her to, and no one else from any of the Dunder Mifflin branches at a time before she learned to wonder about where Pam fit into all this. 

She’d played Flip Cup on his and Mark’s team, sealing them at least two victories, and found Jim’s hand entwined with her’s at some point when they were sitting on the stairs. Up in his bedroom, Jim asked if she wanted to be his girlfriend and she gave him a blow job on his uncovered mattress that would have made a younger version of herself blush.

Karen now can feel that warm flush creep up her neck and settle in her cheeks. She looks at Mark in his faded pajama bottoms with a video game contoller strung over his shoulder. Mark could be any guy that she’s ever dated. But, Mark has never lied to her. He’s never made her feel like shit or used her and she can tell he’s drunk and still trying to be a good guy.

She looks at Mark, and realizes that maybe she’s liked him all along. Karen kisses him, and keeps kissing him, and doesn’t know if she wants Jim to come home and catch them.

\---

The next morning, Karen brushes her teeth in the bathroom she’s used so many times before, and takes her sweatshirt and her makeup bag and her hair dryer. Mark is sleeping and Jim’s bed is empty.

While she’s driving, she wipes tears off her cheeks without acknowledging what she’s crying about. She can’t honestly say she’s sure. 

She goes home and does creepy things, like look at all the pictures on Mark’s Flikr account to see if there’s any of them together. He calls her three times, and she keeps letting it go to voicemail because she has no idea what to say to him.

She doesn’t watch _Metalocalypse_ that night but, still falls asleep feeling his hands on her hips.

\---

In Utica, Karen gets over it. She cries, and calls Sarah late at night and eats way too much raw cookie dough. But, then, she’s not doing that stuff so much any more. And then, she’s not doing it at all.

Of course, right after she realizes how much she’s matured, Jim shows up to help Dwight and Michael destroy her copy machine. And it’s ridiculous to think that three grown men in fake mustaches is all it takes to tip her back into an abyss of suck. But, that’s what happens.

Karen makes Rolando hold her calls after the camera crew leaves and just puts her head on her desk for awhile. She sends Sarah a lengthy e-mail including the details that Jim:  
\- is obviously still not any closer to adulthood  
\- would rather get back in a compact car with two of the least likeable people on the planet than stand for another second in her presence   
\- is remaining blissfully happy with Pam   
and  
\- would choose to never see Karen under any circumstances ever again.

She also asks if she can come to New York next weekend and Sarah agrees if only to prevent Karen from doing something stupid like watching _My Best Friend’s Wedding_ alone in her apartment.

While she’s there, at some bar Sarah frequents after work, Karen runs into Ted. *The* Ted. The one who first helped her realize that making the choice to end a relationship can still let it ironically hurt like hell. Karen thought some nights that she was never going to survive the breakup, and yet, here she is, not dead and much more battle savvy.

She looks at him, past the image she’s carried around for all these years of the guy who took her to senior prom and wore Baja hoodies. Ted’s grown up. He’s designing buildings and talking about wanting to get married and drinking scotch.

When she says, “I apologize for breaking up with you because you called me too much,” he laughs.

“Someone had to be the first.”

He hugs her goodbye at the end of the night, and she thanks him for reminding her that there was a time she wasn’t afraid of going after what she wanted.

Let Pam have Jim. Let her try to help him grow up. And who knows, maybe for Pam, he will. But, that’s not really Karen’s problem any more.

Neither is Mark, who still texts her sometimes, mostly to say he misses her and that Pam sucks at _Medal of Honor_. Mark is still a boy and Karen wants to be done with boys. Boys in t-shirts with stupid sayings on them and disgusting baseball caps. With empty alcohol bottles decorating their kitchens and no food in their refrigerators.

From outside the bar, Karen leaves Mark a message that she’s sorry and if he ever gets out of his dead-end end IT job to drop her a line.

He never calls back, and Karen’s ok with that.

\---

She goes home to visit her family in December. Her brother flies in from Pittsburgh with his wife and kids, and Karen keeps catching her mother on the verge of tears from having them all in the same place. 

Lying in her childhood bedroom with a pillowcase from when she was really into Strawberry Shortcake, Karen feels vaguely adolescent. Like she’s stuck somewhere between being a little girl and a grown woman. All the Karens she’s ever been, the one who picked these sheets, and the one who wore braces and the one who sang many drunken versions of _Backstreet Boys_ ’s songs with Sarah, they’re all somewhere inside of her, building on top of one another.

Her phone chirps, and there’s a text saying, _You’re always 17 in your hometown_. She hits “Call Back” because there’s no way she can capture how *right* that line feels in this moment with only written language.

“Where on earth did you find such a spectacularly appropriate message?” she yells as soon as she’s connected.

“My cousin’s Myspace page. I think it’s from a country song.” She’s kind of shocked and embarrassed, and then she’s laughing because it honestly doesn’t matter how lame it is. 

“Is your cousin at least not 17 right now?”

He scoffs. “Please, Karen. She’s eighteen. And a half.” There’s a pause and then he asks, “Are you bored?”

“You would not believe. Even compared to Utica this town is dead.”

“Get your coat; we’re going to change that right now.”

Two days before Christmas, in Ohio, she makes out with Ted in the back of his mom’s car. The fogged up windows and the rear parking lot of the post office are definitively junior year. But, her and Ted? They aren't. 

At least not exclusively. 

So, Karen can’t say it bothers her at all.


End file.
